Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

On Friday nights and weekends, bands played on a small outdoor stage to the right of the grocery store’s entrance. When there were no bands, it was shaded and a good place to sit. The Mountain Dew’s cold and sugar hurt my teeth, but the flavor... Delicious and weird. Mountain Dew tastes like nothing but itself — just like me. When the Mountain Dew was gone, I walked to the edge of the parking lot and poured antifreeze into the empty bottle. I left the antifreeze jug tucked behind a grassy bush sprouting hard white flowers. Clouds stacked like skyscrapers pushed south toward the gulf.

Did I really want to hurt people? No, not badly. Actually, yeah, just a little. But not seriously. Just a fright to make them appreciate life, just as I had been forced to do through Macy.

I walked through several neighborhoods. I passed bungalows and brick homes, but also construction sites. In Houston, if something is old, people want to rip it down, put in a condo, a steak house.

I needed a hat but didn’t have one. The sun swarmed like bees around my head. I went into the Rothko and pretended to meditate until six, when they kicked everyone out.

I was feeling lost until I saw Larson’s house. There was a dog with curly white fur in the yard. This was Janine. She looked sluggish, like me. I could help her. Larson stepped out onto his stoop and called her in. The two crepe myrtles in front of his house had scattered the ground with pink confetti.

It took a few days of going back at dark, to wait and to watch. He let her out at ten, but didn’t come out with her.

I took a small Tupperware from the food truck and filled it with the poison. I pushed it through the gate, standing back in the hot dark, to watch Janine drink. Forced myself to watch her finish.

I waited for Larson. I knew he would come. It wasn’t fate so much as tacos. The next Tuesday at the MFAH, he appeared. The longer line forced him to wait. I told the next customer I’d be right back. The Mountain Dew bottle was warm in my backpack. I scooped ice into a plastic cup, poured in a tablespoon of the antifreeze, and covered it with limeade.

When it was Larson’s turn to order, I said, “Sorry I was so weird the other day. It took me a second to recognize you.”

“I knew it was you right away, René.”

“How’d everything work out for your dog?”

“Not great. Did I see you the other day, on my street?”

“I like to walk. Do you live nearby? What can I get you?”

The limeade, I told Larson, was on the house.

I watched him eat two Thai chicken tacos at the Ikea table. I watched him drink a plastic cup of water while some feeling, like hair in a drain, clogged my gut. Fucking with a dog was a bullshit thing to do, right? I tried to imagine what Macy would say if she could speak. As Larson stood up, he shook the limeade to say thanks and goodbye.

“Let me make you a fresh one,” I said.

“This one’s fine. When they’re too cold, it hurts my teeth.”

He waited at the crosswalk for the westbound traffic to pass. I told Angus I had to pee. By the middle of the crosswalk, Larson had sucked down the limeade. I followed him into the museum. Near the Islamic art galleries, he rested on a bench. Should I say something to a guard? I could have said something to Larson, but Angus was expecting me back at the truck. I walked outside into thick air.

Within thirty minutes, an ambulance arrived.

“What’s going on over there, I wonder?” Angus said.

A customer with a broad, flushed face leaned on the truck. “I was just coming out. Some guy fell down. They’re trying to help him.”

“Who was it?”

“Search me. Guy wearing a suit. Lots of thick white hair.”

Angus turned. “Do you think it’s the guy from your school, Re? What did he have?”

“A couple of tacos and a limeade. And a glass of water.”

“Let me go see,” Angus said. “You never know. It could be something. Hold down the fort.”

I am still too close to the feelings. To describe them. I remember my heart pounded when, a few minutes later, the police cruisers parked behind the ambulance. I remember my hot and sour mouth, my curiosity. Another part of me, the part that could move, tucked the Mountain Dew bottle back into my bag and grabbed the cash out of the register before leaving.

August brought Hell’s furies. Walking over asphalt hot enough to melt, I became a blister. Red, shiny, and taut. Between the Y’s water aerobics classes, I slipped into the pool. Cold and chemical, it stripped away my skin, my cells. Given enough time, I would be stripped to bones.

In the locker room, I shook a bottle of shaving cream and rubbed the foam over my head. My own face was a blur, a smudge in the mirror, like Larson. I’m sick. No, I’m not. I filled the sink with water and pulled the razor in straight rows across my scalp. After each pass, I cleaned the blades, and it reminded me of shoveling snowy walks. I missed snow now, though I hated it then. The old men shuffled in from the sauna and turned cool showers onto their curved backs. Their loud voices were a comfort. They didn’t mind me. Called me a nice kid as I hand-washed my boxers and binder in the sinks.

When I was done, I sat on a chair outside of the locker room and stared at the picture Dad had sent earlier that week. It came with a text: Remember the pool? Wish we could see you before school starts.

We’d all gone to Walmart to buy an aboveground pool. I’d pushed Macy in her chair into the clothing section and rubbed different fabrics softly along her cheek. In the overgrown backyard, Macy watched us put the pool together and I filled it with the hose. We let the water warm for a day. Then it was ready and I stood in the pool.

“Light as a feather,” Dad had said, lifting Macy from her chair and setting her in my arms. Macy gasped at the feel of the water, let a long moan out of her faintly purple mouth. The inside of a mussel, the sea, Macy’s thin brown legs twigs scissoring in the water until my shhhhhh calmed her down. Behind me, I could hear Dad saying, “You’re good to your sister. You’re good.”

Standing in the museum’s shadow, I watched Taco Heaven from across the street. Angus had hired someone to replace me, a tall and lanky man who would have trouble standing in the truck all day. I waited to see Angus come out, but there was a small line and he always liked to stay ahead of a rush. Another half hour and I would go. At the sculpture garden’s edge, the bamboo waved as squirrels crawled up and down its narrow green trunks. In the middle of the Montrose and Bissonnet intersection, a man wearing a neon vest wove through the traffic, holding a cup. Veteran. Spare change. Anything helps . I waited the first half hour and then another and wasn’t surprised that, the whole time, no one gave the man anything. He was fast with his cane. Maybe he’d been hit, like Macy. Eventually, the line at Taco Heaven disappeared.

I took a drink of water, thinking I would give it another half hour, when the replacement walked across the street to use the bathroom. He scooted across the crosswalk holding something in his hands. Maybe trash? Maybe Angus had seen me and this guy was bringing me something to eat. I looked away, bent down pretending to tie my shoe. I saw the man’s raggedy New Balance sneakers and stood up to look at his face. Fortyish, but younger-looking than Dad. He had a gap between his front teeth and wore his Taco Heaven T-shirt small.

“You look just like he said you would.”

“Who said I would?”

“Angus. He says don’t come back around here.”

“Who are you?”

“Vaughn,” the man said. “I’m the new you.”

“Why did he send you? Why won’t he talk to me?”